EVE General Discussion

At one time, CCP said that a communal room is almost as much work as something with relevant gameplay attached. My guess is there is quite a bit of coding needed before there can be multiple avatars in one area. So CCP will not do it, until there is a big reason to do so.

It is a shame;
[My Avatar] Standing there looking out at my Rattlesnake in the hangar is pretty nice.
Just a shame it is such a resource hog and takes so long to load.

In "Ship Hangar" view, I can dock reship check ammo and drones and undock - All before a 2nd character loads Captains Quarters.

One day, maybe

Something like it has been done for at least one single player games I have played and know of. People wanted an old school RPG (Baldur´s gate , iceind dale style). Obsidian did not think that it was worth the money. So some of the people at Obsidian started a kickstarter campaign and made "Pillars of Eternity". A game where the development were paid for by the people who wanted to play it. Otherwise it would never have been made. It was a candidate for best RPG in 2015 at the gaming awards, so it was largely succesful. I don't see why this could not be adapted to MMOs (outsie of the " I am already paying for EVE" argument) and WIS in EVE specifically. One could of course fear what slippery slope this might start if one were so inclined (you want new ships? donate to our kickstarter).

This dichotomy is often repeated here, but remains simply false! A game can have more than one aspect to it, and people can play games for more than one reason. In fact, EVE is already more a fusion of several games than just a space shooter. Personally, what I really like about EVE is that it feels largely "real", believable as an alternate SF reality. For example, that there is a production chain for space ships, and a player-driven market for it, is just great. That feels much more "realistic" then say a menu where you can unlock a spaceship if you have enough "points", or the like.

Likewise, I really like having highly detailed avatars. My avatar is to me not just some random placeholder, for all intents and purposes I identify with that avatar - not for example with the ship I'm flying. If someone asked me "where are you in the game?", I would not point to my Anathema, I would load up the captain's quarter and point at my avatar. That is "me", the ship is - when all is said and done - just what I fly around in game.

I disagree with people who claim that EVE is not about "immersion". It very much is about immersion, just so far mostly with regards to "game mechanics". Every EVE player builds up this large network in their head of how this world works. For example, to decide whether it is worth buying those Sister's probes and transporting them to a trade hub, you need to know all sorts of things - how these are used, where they would be bought, how you would get there without dying, how this compares with other things you could do in ISK/hour, etc. That is immersion. EVE is very much not just a "PVP for spaceships" simulator - and players who are mainly look for that (fine with me, by the way) still have to deal with other aspects of the game regularly in order to do that. They will then say that they have a mining or trading alt to finance their PVP habit.

So building up more "social mechanics" around the avatar is to me simply a straightforward extension of what EVE already is. It will make the world more believable, and for some it may even become their main deal (and that's perfectly fine, just like some people just trade in EVE). Some others may avoid this almost completely (and that's perfectly fine, just like some people never mine in EVE). For most of us, it would become another thing to have fun with in EVE.

it also releases another problem, if developers know they can get money from players to fund projects then where does it end? we will be funding lots of silly things and players will just get angry when they dont get what they want and have paid money towards it, kickstarters and early access are just cancer

People speak of Kickstarers so lightheartedly, but kickstarters are a very dangerous tool for enstabilished developers as CCP, while for the same reason they can be the only hope of new developers.

First of all, Kickstarters have no obligation to deliver the final product, you are financing an idea. Of course if the developer created a kickstarter just to scam people, the backers can ask for their money back so if they took your money to buy a ferrari instead you can sue them.

But, taken from kickstarer terms of use



In short, if CCP make a kickstarter promising walk in station, with everything and more people wished for, and at the end of the project you get anything less what they promised, you have an edge to ask for a refound, and assuming their reason for not reaching all the goals was satisfing enough to not go into a refound, they will lose their face to the gaming world.

Even worse, for incarna they got a true uprising of the gamers, and the monocle gate and subsequent dev blog about someone's 150 dollars pants is something very hard to forget, do you think they want to add a kickstarter gate now after almost two years of hard work to put their name back on track? I've to give something to CCP, i've seen more things done in the last years with ccp seagull on top than in the last 12, but those stains on their reputation are going to stay for good.

I trust them in their work, I want to trust them with the Citadel expansion, I've high hopes, but on the other side I'm not totally sure we are going to get those awesome "castles in the skyes" the dev blog promised. With this in mind I'm very cautious in talking about WiS, as you either plan it properly in terms of gameplay impact and value, or you are just wasting proper dev time.

Honestly, the best I'm hoping for EvE is a station like the one in X-Com, and that could go well along with the citadels, since you have just three kind of looks (M-L-XL, no faction variants, with modular interiors you just design the rooms and compose them on top of each others), you can give that kind of WiS a gameplay value by using the NPC we looted from wrecks for years instead of simply plugging in Rigs for doing stuff, you can see your character in it doing stuff and since they have a limit in how many are docked at once maybe you can see other avatar docked without risking to have 1500 docked people to render, like Jita 4-4. So yes, no WiS in npc stations but only in player owned citadels, call it... WiC? Walk in Citadels? Could be a thing.

LOL at those who think a keckstarter is going to fix anything.

CCP had plenty of money and plenty of Dev resources to deliver a meaningful WiS.

What they did not (and still do not) have is the vision or the proper management resources to pull it off. Suddenly having a bunch more "donated" money to throw around will not solve either fundamental problem.

What they needed was more pssssht, and project managers and leads who could actually articulate what that means while actually being in touch with their Dev teams, and held accountable for missing targets/milestones. .

Well... CCP is right in believing that it doesn't add anything ...
... simply because all the tools to be social are there already.

Anyone who NEEDS a specific environment to be social ...
... most likely is a bad asset to have around anyway.

Alwayw consider thetype of people it would attract.
I do not kid when I say that I would gather billions of isk in WiS just by talking ...
... and an army of good looking alts, of course.

People socialize differently in different situations. Competitively, facelessly via text, face-to-face (or even to a virtual face), or in what is considered a low-stress competitive environment (playing a game of slay in a virtual bar, etc). Watching a couple of people playing Mind Clash if that was ever a thing would also be great.

Different environments bring out different moods and interactions. You don't need a specific environment to be social, but you do need a specific environment for it to be enjoyable. I'm not sitting in my hangar all day talking in local about the prices going up and down in market. There is no face to face (even virtually), and there are no fun distractions or comforts. A good social area has plenty of both.




What exactly qualifies as important aspects of gameplay though? See, there's the disconnect. I have all the money I would ever need for anything and none of it means anything. Killing people gains me nothing either. It's a cheap thrill and it gets old fast if you're actually competent enough to replicate the same result on your own. Importance is subjective. If you're poor, maybe you want to go out and do things to be less poor. If you're not, you want something else. I want something else.

Some people may not "get it" and that's fine, but to think its unimportant is folly. If it was truly unimportant to most people there wouldn't a massive thread about it to talk in.

If they were, I would have nothing to ask for. Clearly that is not the case.





Whoa, put down the wizard hat buddy. Somebody forgot to take his meds this morning. See, even you might benefit from a social space.